


when I say forever it's the goddamn truth

by zanthetran



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Ficlets, just a compilation of stuff thats either too short or not going anywhere, probably won't have a lot of the full fam in it, sometimes romantic thasmin sometimes not so im gonna tag it as both
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24482272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanthetran/pseuds/zanthetran
Summary: just a never-ending compilation of thasmin (both platonic and romantic).ill put tags and ratings and summary in the notes of each chapter.title from: finding you by kesha
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	1. one (T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: I feel like I got hit by a car...wait I did? and it was your car?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: T
> 
> tags: alt beginning/meeting, hurt/comfort does that count if it's physical?, physical violence but not on like. purpose.
> 
> summary: alternate meeting, yaz hits the doctor with her car.
> 
> notes: no thoughts head empty.

The woman comes out of nowhere — literally.

Just, falls from the sky. Right in front of Yaz’s car. That she can’t stop in time and hits the woman with, _hard_.

It happens so fast that Yaz doesn’t even realize what happened until her foot is slammed on the brake and she’s breathing heavy and the woman is laying on the road in front of her car in a crumpled heap and she _hit a person, what the fuck._

She immediately gets out and runs to the woman laying on the road. She expects blood and broken limbs and possibly even death, but instead the woman laying there has a pulse, strong and fast beneath her fingertips. Really fast, actually. Like double the beat of a normal heart.

“Are you alright?” she asks, voice a bit shrill, and the woman slowly comes back to consciousness. Yaz thinks about calling an ambulance and realizes she left her phone in the car — _shit. “_ I’m going to go get my phone and call an ambulance, okay?” She gets up to run back to the open car door but the woman grabs onto her arm, her grip strong for someone who just got hit by a car.

She mumbles something Yaz can’t quite hear and she leans down, putting her ear close to the woman’s moving lips.

“No ambulance. No hospital,” the woman mumbles, then goes unconscious again.

The decision to take her back to her own flat was a quick made one that obviously didn’t think about all of the consequences, like what if this woman died in her living room, or woke up and was confused why she wasn’t in a hospital after being _hit by a car._ She comes back to consciousness long enough to be helped up the stairs and into Yaz’s flat, and then immediately passes out on the couch.

Yaz doesn't know what to do, then. Wait until the woman wakes up? Call the police anyways? She _ran over someone_ and now has that person unconscious on her living room couch, and she really wishes she’d think more about consequences to actions sometimes.

The woman wakes up sometime after Yaz’s second cup of tea. She groans in pain and rubs at her forehead. “Oh gods, I feel like I got hit by a car.” She rolls over and finally opens her eyes. She takes in the living room of the flat and then Yaz sitting in the chair nearby with her mug in her hand. “Wait, did I? Was it your car?”

“Yeah, sorry bout that. You said no hospital so I brought you back to my flat.” Yaz stands and goes into the kitchen. “Do you want a cuppa?”

“Please, thanks,” the woman says, rolling onto her back and stretching her limbs.

“Are you alright? I hit you pretty hard.” Yaz pours the still hot water from the kettle into another mug and brings it to the woman on the couch.

“I think so. Little sore. Is your car okay? I can leave a dent,” she says. Yaz puts the mug on the coffee table next to the woman and sits in the chair across from her.

“My car is fine,” Yaz replies, but in all honesty, she has no idea. She didn’t even think to check the car after she _ran over someone._ “Pretty impressive you even survived that. Where were you falling from, anyways?”

The woman sits up suddenly and looks up at the ceiling like she’s misplaced something important. “Oh no! My tardis!”

“Your what?”

“My ship! I fell out of her!” She throws her hands up in the air like a petulant child, then picks up her tea.

“Your ship. What, you an alien or something?”

The woman looks so sincere Yaz genuinely can’t tell if she’s joking or not. “‘course. Why else would I fall out of the sky?”

Yaz is silent. Alien? She isn’t sure she believes it.

“If you’re an alien then why do you look like a human woman?”

“That’s rude, and quite self centered, really,” the woman says, taking a drink of her tea and closing her eyes at the warmth. “You lot aren’t the only ones to evolve like you did.”

Yaz studies the woman sitting across from her — the suit she wears looks like it was built for a much larger person, practically falling off her small frame, and tattered to bits in some places. The cuffs hang loose and unbuttoned from both wrists and her hair is unkempt and dirty. “What’s your name?” she finally asks.

The woman gets up and starts looking around Yaz’s flat, touching the picture frames on the walls and licking a leaf on her plant (what the fuck). “The Doctor. Do you have a shower?”

Yaz shows her to the bathroom and how to work the shower and leaves her to it. Twice she has to come into the bathroom and point out which soap should go next in a normal shower cycle, averting her eyes to the ceiling when the Doctor opens the curtain to show her the bottles in question. Yaz looks through her drawers and gets out a night outfit for the woman before realizing she doesn’t even know _if_ she’s staying, or what she is, or _where she’s from, considering she’s an alien._

She ignores all of that and instead sets out the outfit for the Doctor on the bed, leaving her to her shower while Yaz curls on the couch and turns on the tv. Sometime after the second commercial break she hears the water turn off and the door to the bathroom open. A few minutes after that the Doctor comes out of the bedroom wearing the shorts and t-shirt Yaz had left out for her.

“What’s your name?” she asks when she sits down next to Yaz.

“Yasmin Khan. My friends call me Yaz.”

“I’m gonna call you Yaz cos’ we’re friends now,” the Doctor says, grinning brightly. Yaz couldn’t really do anything but grin back.

The gathering coil doesn’t cause a scene until the next night, after Yaz buys the Doctor biscuits for breakfast because she's desperately craving them and after the thrift shop where they acquire her new outfit that she definitely picks out entirely on her own, and by that time the call towards who she is is loud and clear, the echoes of the past kept safe in her hearts, quieter than before.


	2. two (T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "who wouldn't be angry you ate all of my cereal and faked your death for three years?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: T
> 
> tags: post s12, does it follow canon? who knows, the doctor breaks herself out of prison are there plot holes? yes. am I gonna keep writing on this? nope absolutely not.
> 
> summary: the doctor shows up after the prison thing. yaz almost shoots her.
> 
> notes: you can send me prompts @zanthetran on Tumblr if you wanna. will I write them? who knows im a bit unreliable with Creativity but I am Trying My Best. also I blog about 13 a lot.

Three years.

Three years pass after the Doctor sacrifices herself for humanity. Three years of Yaz working as many shifts as possible so she doesn’t get time to _think,_ let alone sleep. Three years of Yaz having almost constant nightmares. Three years of memorials every anniversary that end up with Yaz back her own flat, probably more drunk than is wise and watching the videos she’d taken during their trips on her phone until she falls asleep alone.

Three years, two months, and sixteen days.

It’s a normal enough day, she works a double and when she finally get’s back to her flat her feet ache and all she wants is a hot shower to relax a pulled muscle in her shoulder. She thinks about the takeout she’s going to reheat and unlocks the door, flipping the switch and turning on the light as she steps in.

The first thing that catches her attention is the dirty footprints on her carpet and she immediately reaches to her pocket and pulls out her phone, dialing 999 but hovering her thumb over the call button. The second thing that catches her attention is a soft bang from the kitchen and a clinking noise — like a fork on a plate. She quietly takes another step into the flat and looks into the bedroom on her right — empty — and pulls the taser our of the top right drawer of her dresser. She continues on through the empty living room, silently stopping in the hallway right outside the kitchen. Her heart is racing in her chest and she slows her breathing, takes a deep breath, and turns the corner, holding up her taser.

The sight that greets her is unexpected, to be frank. She almost drops the taser right there on the kitchen floor.

“Uh, hiya, Yaz. Can ya put that down, please?” The Doctor asks, wide eyes pointedly looking at the taser still very much pointed in her direction and with Yaz’s finger on the trigger. “I don’t think it’d kill me but it doesn’t look very pleasant.”

Yaz immediately drops her arms and puts the taser on the countertop facing away from either of them. She takes in the scene slowly, one piece after another. The Doctor, in her kitchen, at 11:30 pm, with a gallon of milk in front of her and three different types of cereal lined up on the counter.

“Also I ate all your cereal. Sorry.” She doesn’t sound sorry.

Yaz looks from the Doctor to the open cereal boxes and back to the Doctor. “How are you here?” She can’t think of another question to ask — or well, she can’t pinpoint _one_ question to ask in the billion of questions that run through her mind at that moment, and _how_ seemed like the best option.

“Funny story, do you want some tea? I’ll put the kettle on.” The Doctor turns and starts the kettle on the stove.

They sit on the sofa after the Doctor makes tea and Yaz at least takes off her coat and boots and pulls her hair out of the tight braid. The Doctor still hasn’t answered their question and is very pointedly making what she probably thinks small talk is, and Yaz is having none of it.

She’s confused, really. Confused and a little bit in disbelief, because the Doctor is _dead_. She can’t be here — can she?

The story does eventually come out; a plan set in motion by the Doctor’s future self — or is it past self at this moment, because she’s already done it? Okay, a plan set in motion by the Doctor’s future self at the time she left the ship (better), and it didn’t make much sense until she ended up on a Judoon prison planet and an inmate gave her a set of instructions on how she needed to fake her own death to the Judoon — and of course she did just that. Didn’t take much, really. The fall from that height was unlivable and it would’ve been years before the Judoon got down to the bottom of the cavern to collect the body — or whatever was left of it.

(She said, “think trash bag full of vegetable soup being dropped from a big height” and Yaz did _not_ want to think about that anymore.)

She eventually finds out she’s the one who gave the inmate the information for herself and goes back to his past and saves his daughter, earning his respect and a favor, to which she gives the instructions for when she goes to prison. The tardis was easy to pick up right outside where Gallifrey used to be and leave at the bottom of the cavern. The hardest part was setting up an invisible transporter about halfway down that would transport her safely to the ground when she jumped.

“So the Judoon think you’re dead?” Yaz asks when the the Doctor finally talks herself into silence, apparently finishing the story.

“Yeah, hope so. Think so. Probably.”

“So why’d it take you so long to come back?” The question is more accusatory than Yaz intended but she needs to know. Three years was a long time to be gone, especially for someone who can literally travel through it.

“I was worried they might come after you lot, truthfully. I — I didn’t want to put you in any danger.”

“How’d you get your stuff back?”

The Doctor beams and looks down at her outfit — the same one she always wore. “Tardis made ‘em for me. Little different than the last but she added some improvements, look!” The Doctor pulls a custard cream out of her coat pocket excitedly.

Yaz ignores the cookie.

“Are you angry?” The Doctor asks.

“Who wouldn’t be angry you ate all my cereal and faked your death for three years?” Yaz exclaims, throwing her hands up. The fight dies right on her tongue, though, as she takes the Doctor in — tired and looking a little worse for wear emotionally, like she just needs a good hug or something (like she missed her fam the entire time she was gone, Yaz thinks). She sighs and rubs at her eyes. “No, of course I’m not angry.”

The Doctor beams and scoots closer, nudging Yaz’s shoulder with her own. “Glad to have me back?”

Yaz rolls her eyes and turns the tv up.

_Of course she is._


	3. three (G)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: ’i found you sleeping on my balcony when i went out to water my plants why are you here and more importantly how did you get here we’re eighteen floors up’ au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: G
> 
> tags: fluff, this is literally just 477 words of the doctor being tired. thats it.
> 
> summary: yaz finds the doctor on her balcony in the morning
> 
> notes: I don’t know why I wrote this. Its a Lot shorter than expected. hm. Also I dont know what the M1 is or if it’s heavy traffic I can barely imagine driving on the left side dont @ me please. Also if anyone from the uk wants to be my Personal Dictionary im taking applications job duties include telling me what you call different things like suspenders or pants.

She gets her own flat. It’s small and on the 18th floor (elevator, _bless_ ) and overlooks the M1 but she’s a heavy sleeper and doesn’t mind the noise all that much. Graham helps her replace the locks with reinforced ones and The Doctor moves all her stuff up with the tardis (and Yaz has never been more grateful for having a friend with a spaceship) and Ryan buys her a plant, nice gesture.

But she does take care of the plant and eventually she gets more, covering her small balcony in flower pots and lining the walls with pictures of the fam, of her family, of the Doctor. It becomes her own space and she loves the peace it brings her.

It’s when she’s going out to water said plants that she almost drops the can (but thankfully saves it before she goes splashing water all over the unconscious Doctor).

“Doctor?”

No response. Yaz looks closer — she’s breathing, so not dead. Sleeping probably. If anyone slept like the dead more than Yaz, it was the Doctor (when she did sleep, on those rare occasions, and apparently one of those rare occasions was right now on Yaz’s balcony).

“Doctor,” Yaz stage whispers, pushing the Doctor’s foot with her own foot.

The Doctor groans and rolls onto her side.

Yaz thinks she looks kinda cute, but she really needs to water her plants before her shift and the Doctor sleeping on the hard concrete of her balcony is stopping that from happening. She puts the can down and kneels next to the Doctor, pushing her over. “Doctor, wake up. I need you to move.” She shakes her shoulder to no response other than a deep sigh. “Doctor, I’ve got custard creams,” she says.

One of the Doctor’s eyes opens and takes Yaz in, eyeing her empty hands. “No you don’t, liar,” she grumbles.

“Well now that you’re awake, get up. I need to water my plants.” Yaz stands and picks up the watering can again. “Also, how did you get up here?”

“Climbed,” the Doctor mumbles, barely intelligible. She slowly brings herself to her feet and rubs at her eyes like a child.

“Go sleep in my bed, it’s fine,” Yaz says, pushing the Doctor towards her room. She doesn’t know why the Doctor isn’t in the tardis or why she _climbed_ Yaz’s building at god knows what hour, but she doesn’t care, really. She’s travelled with the Doctor far too long to let the weird occurrences weigh heavy on her mind, and the sliver of thought that wondered why she hadn’t just called or texted flew right out of her mind when she looked into her bedroom on her way out and saw the blonde wrapped cocoon style in Yaz’s duvet, blonde hair sticking out the top and one socked foot sticking out from the end of covers.


	4. four (M)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “If I told you I hate you, what would you do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: M for a kinda graphic description of how an alien could kill a person
> 
> summary: she said she’d be back. she was too late.
> 
> tags: angst, major character death, uh some depictions of dead people, it’s not super explicit so I didn’t rate it as such
> 
> notes: *dancing woman emoji* also you can send me prompts @zanthetran on Tumblr

She waits. The Doctor says, “Yaz, I _will_ come for you. Just wait for me, alright?” and she believes her. She repeats the Doctor’s words as she lives on this alien planet and learns the language and even starts to make acquaintances (and some of them turn into mother-like figures in her life). She waits and lives and works and repeats and waits, and the Doctor doesn’t come. Not one glimpse of that blue or a flash of blonde hair and grey coat.

The first ten years are hard. She’s angry for most of it. Angry at the Doctor, at herself, at whatever reason there could be that the Doctor hasn’t _come back for her._

She misses her family a lot in that time, and she thinks about what happened to them — to _her._ Probably a missing persons report when she didn’t come home that night, and a search and interviews and more searching, but they won’t find anything. It’ll be like she disappeared off the face of the Earth (funny, innit? That saying. They have no idea). She hopes her parents don’t hold out hope for long, she doesn’t want that pain to last longer than it needs to. She hopes they assume dead, that someone in the police department tells them she won’t be coming home. She hopes they get her declared legally dead and she hopes they don’t hurt for her.

The next ten pass easier, she gets her bearings in the town and starts a trade with the woman next door for fresh vegetables if Yaz hunts (she’s good at that, now) for the two of them, and the old woman down the road brings her a home cooked meal every single week, saying a “growing girl should get her food” — or something to that measure. It wasn’t an exact translation (and she’s much older than a ‘growing girl’ but she appreciates the sentiment nonetheless).

She helps the old woman around her house with the odd jobs that need doing. Yaz learns her son is fighting in the war, the woman holds out a tablet-like device with a picture of her son in his army uniform, and Yaz tells her she was a police officer in another life, long ago.

By the time she does show up, it’s too late. Eighteen minutes and forty five seconds too late, to be exact.

The word got round in the morning of the inevitable invasion. The front lines had been taken out and the Vor’ans were fast approaching, and not likely to leave survivors. There wasn’t much they _could_ do, except hope and pray.

They’d heard the rumors, of course. Rumors about the violence and cruelty and brutality at the hands of these warriors. Rumors that a death was not a fast one, and far more painful than anything else. Rumors that even a single prick from a blade will leave enough poison to boil your blood and melt your organs.

In the end, the slice to her arm doesn’t even hurt (physically and emotionally). She’s the last one — all the others dead, killed, the poison having already taken over their bodies and quite literally melted their organs and boiled their blood, by the looks of it. She doesn’t bandage the wound — there’s no reason to, she’s going to be dead soon like the others.

The whir outside the window registers as familiar and Yaz slowly picks her head up and peers out the window. She had stopped getting excited by a particular shade of blue or flash of blonde hair ages ago, but she cant’t stop the way her heart beats fast in her chest at the familiar sight.

Dark tardis blue stands out against the dusty orange backdrop of the village, and the tardis doors open. Yaz half expects a white haired scotsman or sand-shoes to step out with another companion or something, but a blonde head peeks around the door frame and then the body follows.

The cut on her arm is hot to the touch and she's starting to run a fever. Sweat runs down her temples as she lays herself back down on the bench. It's too late, she knows that, and she’d rather not have to spend her last moments thinking about a life lived long ago — the _possibilities_ that life had.

Like always, luck is not on Yaz’s side this time, and a few second later the door of her house flings open and the Doctor ( _her_ Doctor) walks in, eyes fixed on a beeping device in her hands. She looks up and scans the room once, eyes passing right over Yaz on the bench, and then does a double take.

The look of…relief that passes the Doctor’s face almost makes Yaz’s resolve crumble. She feels like a teenager again (barely an adult, nineteen when they left, twenty-two when she disappeared) at the sight of the familiar grey coat, purple shirt, and blonde hair.

“Yaz,” she breathes. “Yaz, I…” she looks Yaz up and down and her eyes flit over the small two room house and Yaz can see her take in every single personal item and decoration and display of a life lived here.

“Don’t,” Yaz says. She shifts slightly on the bench so the Doctor can sit next to her. “Doctor.” The name is familiar on her tongue, even after all this time, and it brings her a type of comfort still.

The blonde sits next to her and finally takes in the superficial wound on her upper forearm, now burning hot and bright red. “Yaz, you need to get this bandaged, infection is a very serious thing. I should know, I’m a Doctor.”

“Poison,” is all Yaz says in response, and all she needs to say as the Doctor’s eyes go wide and she looks back down at the wound. She pulls out her sonic and holds it over the cut and her face is downright _scared_ when she looks back at Yaz. “I know,” Yaz says, because she does — no antidote, no cure.

The Doctor opens and closes her mouth like a fish out of water, probably trying desperately to think of something reassuring with those two brains. Finally she says, “Yaz, I’m so sorry.”

Yaz rolls her eyes. “Oi, enough of that now. What’ve you been up to?” She doesn’t grimace in pain when she feels her lungs start to burn ( _boil_ ).

“Trying to find you. Got knocked off course by a temporal tsunami on my way back to get you, and by the time I got back I’d lost your signal. Just finished making tracker and it worked,” the Doctor says, sounding proud of herself.

“Impressive.”

“Quite is,” she says, then softer, “sorry I’m so late.”

“Me too,” Yaz admits, closing her eyes. She feels the Doctor lace their fingers together slowly and the coolness of her palm makes Yaz sigh (maybe not _happily,_ more like _finally_ ).

“Do you hate me, Yaz?”

The question jars Yaz so much that she cracks open her aching eyes and studies the Doctor. “If I told you I hate you, what would you do?”

“Nothing, I s’pose,” she shrugs, keeping her eyes locked on Yaz’s. “Let you be mad at me.”

Yaz takes one last look at the Doctor, memorizing her features until they’re burned into her mind, behind her closed eyelids (but maybe it was burned there long before now). “I was mad ages ago. I’m just glad you’re here.” _So I don’t have to die alone_ stays unsaid.

“I’m glad I’m here too, Yaz,” she says sadly.

Yaz doesn’t see the tears fall from the Doctor’s eyes, or the way she holds Yaz’s hand long after she’s gone, or the rage and vengeance that burns in her eyes when she finally calms.

The Vor’ans really didn’t stand a chance after that.


	5. five (T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: that sam smith song that goes "you said, 'I'm sorry, believe me, I love you, but not in that way.'"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: T (BARELY, not even. it doesn't have enough words to be T).
> 
> tags: angst, unrequited love, sam smith
> 
> summary: "I'm sorry, believe me, I love you, but not in that way."
> 
> notes: this is one of the first thasmin fics I wrote ever bc I love that sam smith song and this has just been sitting there forever bc it's too short to actually even be considered a fic or a chapter (its like a poem basically). I got some stuff in the works that ill be posting the next couple days so look out for that. as always you can send prompts my way @zanthetran on Tumblr.

“Yaz,” she says, voice quiet and cracking at the end. “I’m _sorry_ , believe me, I love you.”

Yaz wants to tell her to stop. Stop talking, she can’t handle the next part; she doesn’t _want_ to. She wants to clap her hands over her ears and make noise like she and Sonya used to do as kids. She wants to _hit_ her, to shove the Doctor away from where her shaking hand is hovering over Yaz’s arm (afraid to touch her, like the girls in secondary school after she came out. Afraid to send the wrong signal. Afraid Yaz is predatory, _afraid)._

Mostly, she just wants to take the confession back. She wants to put the words back in her mouth and keep playing the part of companion #3, gaze always lingering too long, fingers always itching to reach out, and heart always thumping hard at close proximity.

It had to happen, eventually. She knows that. The logical part of her brain — the cop part, the investigative part — knows that. The tension was taut, it would've come to a breaking point eventually and it's better to rip the bandaid off now than let it sit.

The stupid emotional part of her brain gave quite a fuss about it, though.

She finally says it, hand pulling back before making contact with Yaz and nervously fiddling with a switch on the console. “But not in that way.”

Yaz immediately nods, neck stiff and movement shaky as she steps away. Her boots echo on the metal tardis floor. She nods again.

“I understand, Doctor. Let’s just - we can just forget about it, please.”

And those eyes ( _god_ , those eyes) stay on Yaz as she takes another step back, another step towards the tardis doors, another step _away._ She picks at the hem of her jeans and finally looks away, eyes moving fast over the interior of the tardis.

“I’m going to go,” she says, when she can’t think of anything else to say. And she does. She leaves, and they don’t talk about it again. Yaz tried - and failed - once, and she isn’t going to push the Doctor.

She figures she could be worse off (like having not met her at all).


	6. six (g)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “it’s 5 am” “I know”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “it’s 5 am” “I know”
> 
> rating: g
> 
> summary: the Doctor doesn’t understand what time is usually
> 
> tags: bed sharing, uhhh, fluff?, not exactly fluff per say but not angst so, there needs to be a neutral tag between fluff and angst that’s means nothing good happened but nothing BAD happened either
> 
> notes: me, writing ANOTHER bed sharing fic? Its more likely than you think! Anyways most of my days are spent thinking about how I can get them in the same bed together and talking. That’s it. As always you can send prompts to @zanthetran.

The knock wakes Yaz from a dead sleep. She lifts her head and rolls over, pushing long hair out of her face, and another knock sounds on the door. She furrows her brows when she sees the digital alarm clock blink out “5:00” and rolls herself out of bed, padding barefoot to the door. She looks through the peephole and the sight only confuses her even more. She pulls the chain away and unlocks the deadbolt, pulling the door open on the figure.

“Doctor?”

“Yaz! Hiya! Whatcha up to?” she asks, far too awake for the ungodly hour.

Yaz looks around the Doctor and out the doorway to see if there were aliens or something chasing her, or a _reason_ she was at Yaz’s flat right now.

“It’s five am,” she says.

The Doctor nods. “I know.”

Yaz rubs a tired hand over her face. “Doctor, I don’t mean to be rude, but why are you here?”

She looks sheepish as her eyes avert Yaz’s own. “Couldn’t sleep. Was wonderin’ if I could, as the kids say, crash on your couch tonight?”

Yaz’s sleep fogged brain is only running at about 3/4 capacity and the words don’t really make any sense but she steps aside anyways and lets the Doctor bound in excitedly.

“You know it’s my day off, right? I should be sleeping in,” Yaz grumbles, with absolutely no heart behind it. Truthfully she can’t imagine anyone else she’s rather have at her door at five in the morning.

“Sorry, Yaz. I forgot it was so late — early,” the blonde says, toeing off her boots and coat and sitting cross legged on the couch.

Yaz eyes her up and down. “You gonna sleep in that?”

The Doctor looks down at her outfit — the exact same as always, black shirt this time. “Well, no, I usually take the suspenders off —“

“You _sleep_ in that?” Yaz interrupts, the surprise evident in her voice.

“What…else would I sleep in?” She sounds so genuinely confused that Yaz laughs, the tiredness of being woken up so abruptly finally catching up with her.

“Doctor, you’re tellin’ me you sleep in your clothes. All the time.”

The Doctor stands up, a bit defensive in her posture. “Well not _all_ the time! Time Lords don’t _need_ as much sleep as your _human_ bodies do,” she fumes.

Yaz covers the smile on her face and tries to stop laughing but the Doctor has her arms crossed over her chest and actually looks right pissed and Yaz finally says, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t taking the piss. You can borrow some of my pajamas, yeah?” She walks into her room with the Doctor following behind, looking less upset and just half-heartedly glaring at Yaz, and pulls out a t-shirt and pair of sleep shorts for the Doctor. She hands them over and points out the bathroom.

She quickly realizes she did _not_ think this plan through when the Doctor steps out of the bathroom in her clothes and she almost has a heart attack from the sight alone. She says, a little more rushed than she’d intended, “I’ll sleep on the couch, you don’t have to.” Because her mother didn’t raise an _animal_.

“Oh, no Yaz, you don’t have to sleep on the couch,” the Doctor says, stepping into the bedroom. Yaz almost thinks _she’s_ going to offer to sleep on the couch but really, this is the _Doctor. “_ We’d both fit on the bed, I bet.”

Her mouth goes bone dry and she can’t even make herself respond verbally, only nodding when the Doctor sticks her head around the doorway.

This plan is far less thought out than the last one (and the last one nearly killed her). Yaz doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep with the press of the Doctor’s warm body next her own and she’s practically stiff as a board, not wanting to move for fear of messing something up or ruining it or waking up (because it’s obviously a dream).

The Doctor rolls to her side and asks, “is this what pillow talk is?”

Yaz wants to scream.

She almost does, actually. She wants to ask _what in gods name_ would compel the Doctor to ask that question, and also where she even heard the term _pillow talk,_ and also how she doesn’t know what it is (Yaz assumes intimacy is universal).

Instead, she just clears her throat and gives a curt, “no, this isn’t what pillow talk is.”

“Stupid name, then. They should change it. I bet I could talk to the person who invented it and get them to change it.”

“Good plan.”

“Yaz?”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Why do you have a bunch of stars stuck to your ceiling?”

Yaz smiles at the question. Not really what she was expecting, but it was the Doctor, so. “I like the stars, I guess.”

“Me too,” the Doctor says. She’s only quiet a moment more before her brain apparently thinks of more questions to ask. “Yaz?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s your favorite color?”

Yaz turns her head and regards her with furrowed brows. “Why?”

The duvet moves as the Doctor shrugs. “Just realized I don’t know it.”

“Yellow. Amber, to be precise.”

“Like the tardis?” she asks.

Yaz pauses a moment and bites the inside of her cheek. “Yeah,” she finally says. “Like the tardis.”

“Me too,” the Doctor replies simply.

Yaz rolls over to her side and faces the Doctor. It feels so much more intimate like this and she almost doesn’t ask the question on the tip of her tongue. It spills over anyways. “Was it scary? Being in prison, I mean.”

The Doctor closes her eyes and scrunches her face. “Sort of. Were quiet, didn’t like that. Talked to myself a lot,” she says, opening her eyes again. “Talked to you a lot too.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to that, really, so she doesn’t.

The Doctor continues. “The worst part was knowin’ you all were down here thinking I was dead.”

“I’m glad you’re not,” Yaz says and it feels a bitlike an admission of some kind.

“Me too,” she agrees, then, “Yaz?”

“Yeah?”

“I think this is what pillow talk is.”

Yaz chuckles quietly. “Alright.”


	7. seven (T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anon message on tumblr: “Seeing ur posts just makes me wanna say that when you're sober you should absolutely write 13 getting drunk (ginger-ed???) and dancing w Yaz.” So I did, but while I was drunk instead of waiting until I was sober.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: T for drinking
> 
> tags: drunk doctor, thasmin, dancing, fluff, established relationship
> 
> summary: drunk doctor wants to dance and wear no pants.
> 
> notes: hi. just a lil something. I like to dance when im drunk but more like just swinging my body around to a general beat of music. kind of.

First off, they don’t set out to get the Doctor drunk

It starts as normal a conversation as any — Ryan asking questions about the Doctor and her “superpowers”, and the Doctor answering with sort of vague, cryptic answers that only lead Ryan to ask _more_ questions, and then he asks, “Can you get drunk?”

The Doctor doesn’t hesitate. “Yes, absolutely. Well, sort of. I can get drunk, either by drinking alcohol, but which I can just shrug off the affects of whenever I’d like, or by drinking ginger-beer, which reduces my ability to tolerate alcohol.”

“So, like, you can get drunk but you can just be sober whenever you want?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then what good is gettin’ drunk?” Graham asks.

The Doctor shrugs. “I don’t do it often — ever, really. A few times with River, once with Amy and Rory. A few other times here and there.”

“Let’s get drunk now, then,” Ryan says, looking excited.

“Ryan, I don’t think —“ Graham starts.

“Alright!” the Doctor interrupts.

“I’ll match you drink for drink and we can see if your tolerance is up to your braggin’,” Ryan quips, going to the cabinet and pulling out a bottle of dark liquid (apparently the tardis has good taste).

So it just, happened really. Yaz was powerless to stop it, obviously. Once Ryan got on about something it was really hard to get him to forget it, and she figured this thing can’t really be that harmful to anyone. She occasionally looks up from her book in her lap and watches the Doctor down another shot, throat bobbing.

Graham goes to bed first, then Ryan taps out, two hours later, looking worse for wear, and truly, the Doctor isn’t that far behind. He stands from the chair, wobbles slightly, then laughs, big grin on his face. Piss drunk. Yaz has seen her fair share of that in her line of work.

“Well, mates, it was fun, but I’m gonna go to bed,” Ryan says, slight slur to his voice, and he makes his way out of the kitchen.

Yaz’s eyes go to the Doctor who sits across the table from her and is currently just staring at her hands, mouth open.

“Doctor?” she says.

The blonde’s head snaps up, eyes wide like she had forgotten Yaz was there.

“You alright?” Yaz asks.

“Yeah, Yaz — Yasmin Khan. I am perfectly fine. More fine than I have ever been in my entire life, and that’s a long time. A lot of fine’s in there, you know,” she says, sounding like she’s over enunciating each word just to get them out correctly. She stands from her chair suddenly, wobbling slightly just like Ryan and giving her a big, drunk grin.

“Maybe you should stay sitting —“

“Oi, don’t tell me what to do, Khan!” the Doctor barks, then grins. “Wow, sounded like a boss there, didn’t I?” She slowly walks around the other end of the table until she gets to Yaz. She pulls the book from her lap, sticking a napkin from the table into the book to mark her place and setting it off to the side (considerate, even when drunk. Amazing, truly).

“That was my book.”

“Dance with me,” the Doctor says.

Yaz furrows her brows, looking around at the kitchen they sit in. “Here? Like, now?” What is it about drunk people and dancing? Did she want Yaz to like, grind on her or something? (Like, she’s not _opposed,_ but she also doesn’t want to have sex when the Doctor is in this state, so.)

The Doctor rolls her eyes and picks up Yaz’s hand, trying to pull her up. “Yes, _now._ When else?”

“Well we _are_ in a time machine,” Yaz says, letting herself be pulled from the chair. She stands close to the Doctor who smells like a mix of ginger-beer and crown royal (ew).

The Doctor pulls her to the center of the kitchen and drapes her arms over Yaz’s shoulders. Yaz doesn’t move for a minute until the Doctor starts swaying back and forth, laying her head on Yaz’s shoulder. Her hot breath hits Yaz’s neck when Yaz finally pulls her close, placing a soft kiss on her shoulder as they sway together. She keeps her nose buried in blonde hair, eyes closed, taking it all in.

The Doctor, in her arms, safe and comfortable enough to let her guard down with all of them. From stunted answers and sour moods during their travels to this — the Doctor in her arms, swaying to music playing only in their heads in the middle of a kitchen on a Tuesday night (technically. Yaz keeps track).

This, right here. This is all Yaz really needs, when you get right down to it.

She doesn’t know how long they stand there slightly swaying but it’s long enough that eventually the Doctor starts to lean heavier on Yaz and she pulls back slightly, trying to look down at the blonde’s face. “Do you want to go to bed?” she asks.

The Doctor mumbles something against her neck and nods. Yaz pulls back, sifting her fingers through blonde hair and holding the Doctor’s head up to press a kiss to her forehead. The Doctor smiles, eyes closed, and follows carefully as Yaz leads her towards their bedroom. She gets her sitting on the bed and kneels in front of her.

The Doctor chuckles, tongue darting between her teeth. “If you wanted to get on your knees, Yasmin Khan, all you had to do was tell me,” she says, obviously trying to sound flirtatious but mostly just sounding really, really drunk.

Yaz unties her boots and pulls them off, setting them to the side. “Oi, keep it in your pants,” she warns.

The Doctor giggles — literally _giggles_ — and Yaz pulls her up to a standing position. “Do you want to sleep in your bra or no?” The Doctor shakes her head, then looks like that was a bad idea, face going slightly pale.

“You’re not gonna vomit, are you?” Yaz asks worriedly.

“No, no, I’m okay,” she says.

Yaz pulls her shirts off and reaches around to unhook her bra, letting it slide to the floor. The Doctor is always a sight to look at when naked, and when piss drunk isn’t an exception. Yaz doesn’t stare at the toned abs or the freckle above her right breast or the expanse of smooth skin as she pulls a sleep shirt over her head, then her arms. She unbuttons her pants and lets them pool at the floor, leaving the Doctor in just her boxers, and then she pulls back the covers and lets the Doctor fall back against the pillows.

She groans and curls into the pillow on Yaz’s side, face in the fabric. Yaz pulls the comforter up to her chin and swipes blonde hair from her face before going over to the shared dresser and getting her own sleep clothes out. She changes and brushes her teeth, pulling her hair from the loose braid and brushing it out. When she gets back into the room the Doctor is fast asleep, curled mostly on Yaz’s side still. Yaz shuts off the light and slides beneath the sheets, nudging the Doctor with her knee.

“Hey, move over, you’re hoggin’ the bed,” she whispers.

The Doctor mumbles something but moves over a few inches, letting Yaz settle comfortably next to her before the Doctor curls up against her side and slides an arm around her waist. Yaz adjusts them so the Doctor’s head is on her chest and she can run her fingers through her hair absentmindedly. Fingers find her free hand and tangle together on her stomach.

The dark of the room envelops them, the quiet of the ship without the mechanical hum she sometimes hears or the sound of the air kicking on or Ryan and/or Graham going to get a midnight snack. She thinks the Doctor is asleep when she mumbles, “Thank you, Yaz.”

“Of course,” Yaz whispers back, not wanting to break the bubble around them.

The Doctor sighs against her chest. “Sometimes I feel like our time together goes so fast,” she says.

“Oi, none of that, now. I’m right here.”

“You’re right here,” the Doctor repeats in a whisper, like she’s trying to remind herself. She looks up at Yaz with hazy eyes. “What do you want to do for your birthday?”

“How did you know it’s my birthday soon?” Yaz hasn’t told anyone — she’s pretty sure Ryan doesn’t know. She doesn’t make a big deal of it (her family does, her _sister_ does, insert long text about it being a celebration fo another year she decided to stay alive, etc) and she was planning on letting it pass by the Doctor entirely unnoticed.

“Very perceptive, me,” she says, then the tardis makes a noise and she frowns. “Alright, she told me. But I would’ve remembered!” she protests. The tardis makes another noise and the Doctor huffs.

“I don’t think she believes you,” Yaz quips.

“Shut up.”

They lay in the silence of ship again, Yaz not even remotely tired but willing to lay under the Doctor for as long as she needed — because, while she says “I’m right here”, sometimes she feels like she’s years in the future, decades, the knowledge that she will leave the Doctor before the Doctor leaves her seeping into her _bones_. That one day she will become another name that hurts to hear, that the Doctor talks about quietly in the dark with another companion (will her Doctor still be alive or will she be someone else by then).

It scares her. It scares the absolute fucking shit out of her. It scares her so much sometimes she can’t breathe, can’t think about anything else but how, when, where (what planet), _when_ —

The Doctor sighs against her neck, pulling her closer and bumping her nose underneath Yaz’s jaw and pressing a soft kiss to the skin there, and yeah, it’s worth it.

It’s paralyzingly terrifying, but it’s worth it ( _she’s_ worth it).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, send prompts to @zanthetran on tumblr! <3


End file.
